A Prohibition Against Sodomy and Sapphism
by Morosetintedglasses
Summary: In a misguided attempt to repopulate the decimated wizarding world, the provisional wizarding government issues an edict against homosexual indecency. Consequently, Hogwarts becomes the target of a homophobic public health campaign. PostDH. HG GW, HG OCs
1. Chapter 1

A Prohibition Against Sodomy and Sapphism

_Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law_. -Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

We all find our own ways to cope. The most rational means by which one copes is through problem-solving thinking; unfortunately, people are not rational. (War is not rational.) According to Freud—and Hermione _knows_ Freud, as she has conscientiously kept abreast of the coursework of her muggle peers. She was slated to take the A-levels in the spring except…she couldn't make the appointment—but according to Freud, when problem-solving strategies fail us (as they are wont to do, brutes that we are) a range of defense mechanisms are triggered. Basically, defense mechanisms serve to protect us from ourselves by distorting reality into something manageable for our fragile psyches.

One such strategy would be displacement. Because she can find no constructive outlet for her anger…she'll kick her cat. Surely, Crookshanks is not the dark lord, nor in any way responsible for his atrocities, but there's just something cathartic about kicking something. Still, when all is said and done, she's left with both unresolved anger and a disgruntled cat to contend with.

Another would be projection. She could say "Why mother, you look knackered. Your post-traumatic-stress-disorder must be acting up again" or "Oh father, your flashbacks of innocent people being eviscerated by a sadistic, reptilian mad-man are really interfering with your productivity."

Rationalization—"it's all in God's plan. God wanted unmitigated death begetting unmitigated suffering." Well, God's an unmitigated sadist.

Reaction Formation—instead of huddling under her desk in a fetal position and crying until her head aches she'll…do a merry jig.

Regression—she'll regress into her childhood. Her jubilant childhood of…almost being bludgeoned to death by a troll, eaten by a werewolf, given a myocardial infarction by a basilisk—Oh, those carefree days of simplicity and gaiety.

Repression—and not in the fun, Victorian novel way where eventually she breaks down Mr. Darcy's emotional walls, and his dour, acerbic disposition yields to soft kisses and fluffy bunny rabbits. No, this is denial's second cousin. Haven't seen each other since repression was "this big", but was invited to the wedding anyway. She'd push uncomfortable thoughts (death, anger, guilt) and images (green, distended stomach, smoking hole in a shattered skull, a cold death's head leering) down into her subconscious, so that she's surprised when she jumps at the word 'war' (common these days, what with the American incursions into the Middle East) or sweats at the sight of blood.

Sublimation—burning away her problems in a gaudy glass bowl and exhaling them with the cannabis. Or fucking until she's limp. Drugs come in innumerable colors, consistencies and ecstasies.

Denial—never happened. No war. No Voldemort. No death heads staring at her with startling vacancy, evil smoldering behind that inert metal mask. Smoke should have been wafting out of the eye holes. And no hope for pity or reprieve, just promises…

And finally, her preferred method of deferring her angst—intellectualization. Taking an objective viewpoint devoid of emotional content. How utterly…predictable. But that's who she is. The cool-headed intellectual. A bastion of sense amongst delirious emotions. Yes, there was pain and death and loss—but who is she to indulge in despair? Just the other day, she heard on the telly about a Bangladeshi orphan whose family was killed by the tsunami, whose aunt sold her to a pimp for the equivalent of two pound thirty, and whose virginity will be sold to the highest bidder when she reaches menarche. Who is Hermione to indulge in tears when she has her life, her freedom, her family, potable water, education…and a telly with 200 channels through which she can watch their suffering—or Wife Swap? No, she doesn't deserve the luxury of grief. She's actually rather proud of herself. Her eyes have been dry as the Kalahari through this whole ordeal…but isn't that just a little odd? Not to cry. Not even for her friends. To move on so quickly like their lives had been written on water in her soul. Maybe she can't feel anymore. Maybe she never could. Maybe her friends were nothing but convenient ego boosts—tools to make her feel needed. Something to stopper her own insecurities.

To cry now—it would be like trying to retch up her own stomach.

BRRRING BRRRING She nearly jumps out of her skin as the phone tremors beside her. Sudden, loud noises have always made her sympathetic nervous system twitch, but now the physical excitation is so acute that her stomach churns nauseas and her heart palpitates.

BRRRING the phone continues. No one's picked up. Mum and Dad must be out. Probably intended for them anyway, but still, she could take the message.

She plucks the phone off the receiver, a chintzy Hello Kitty number purchased before Hogwarts.

"Hello, Granger residence," she says in her painfully put-on phone voice.

"Hermione?" a young woman's voice answers with more familiarity than Hermione can claim.

"Sorry, who's speaking?" She fells a pang of guilt for not recognizing the choice that has done the courtesy of recognizing hers.

"It's Becks," she says, with a kind of finality that suggests that this hint should be enough for Hermione. She scrolls through her mental rolodex, which has become rather short and dusty from disuse, but registers no recognition of "Becks" under the B's. When Hermione remains silent, she continues, "Miss Mee's maths class. Hucknall International School."

The fragments coalesce into the time-blurred outline of a girl with straw-colored hair, (frequently unbrushed and tucked under a brash blue beret) and a blushing pink Tinkerbell jumper covered in ketchup stains and frequently reeking of Febreze, as she insisted on wearing that rag every bloody day. Yes, Becks Crossman. She and Hermione used to play role-play during lunch. When she and Becks played house, neither wanted to play the mommy, so they both played the daddy. Trangenderism and alternative families—oh, had her Hogwarts friends seen her then.

Ironically, Hermione feels that she possessed far more imagination in muggle schools than at Hogwarts. Imagination functions much more smoothly when unpressured by the possibility of realization. For example, it is much easier to fantasize about trolls and snakes and pixies—until you realize that all three have attempted to maim and/or kill you. And aside from that, systematizing magic has muted her enthusiasm for it. To an eleven-year-old, magic is a source of wonder, but squeezing it into an intellectual framework makes it…not magic. It's technology. But not. It's technology without a discernable mechanism—like giving a Playstation to a caveman. Philosophical fulminations aside, it's refreshing to hear a voice _not_ laden with pity for the "sad state of things."

"Oh Becks!" she replies, with perhaps an inappropriate measure of enthusiasm. "Grand to hear from you!"

"Yeah, we thought you were dead or something. Your parents said something about a boarding school in Scotland, but we never saw you, even during the hols, so we just assumed that they'd cut you up into little pieces and put you in the walls."

Hermione feels somewhat abashed. She hadn't bothered to contact anyone from her former school, though she hadn't expected anyone to care. They used to call her a teacher's pet—and maybe she was. Maybe she should have remained one. Here. Then at least she'd have a future. Now she's just got the diffuse fragments of her eleven-year-old self to reconcile with the woman she's become in a parallel world. And worse—she can't be either one. It's as if she was in a car accident seven years ago, spent the intervening time in a persistent vegetative state, and has awoken to womanly expectations when all she'd like to do is dream again. Well, dreams are ephemeral. Isn't that right?

"I'm sorry. I should have said something."

"No worries, mate. Anyway, I'd've left Hucknall in a heartbeat if I had the opportunity."

"Well, I'm _sure_ that you're going to University this fall, so that should get you out." The emphasis on "sure" sounds insufferably presumptive, and of course her regrets are immediately rewarded.

"Erm, no, actually." Hermione isn't sure whether Becks's tone is sardonic. Hermione feels she deserves derision, so she'll assume so. "UL rejected me," Becks continues with palpable irritation, as if Hermione were the personification of UL at which Becks could vent her frustrations.

"Well, you know, you're a gifted student, but UL maintains high standards—"she pauses, realizing that her words probably bear a close resemblance to Becks' rejection letter. "—too high, if you ask me." She says in words ransacked from the cinema. The tone shift is painfully artificial, but she presses on. "I'm not going to university either. I couldn't even get into Nottingham." All true, in an equivocating kind of way.

"So what are you going to do?" Becks asks, tone neutral. Hermione is crap at lying.

"I'm probably going to…work." And what the hell do people her age do for employment? From what she's seen, they either go to university or become rowdy knuckle-draggers, smoking fags, getting sloshed and sitting on the pavement making obscene comments to passers-by. At any rate, Hermione hopes that her response would be adequate.

"Oh really, where are you going to work?"

And here is the pivotal moment which will determine whether the conversation continues, or Becks suddenly remembers that she left the kettle on.—Why care? Having faced death….many times, it seems as if approval should be a triviality—should, of course, being the operative word. Hermione feels as if there's perspective to be gained from her experiences—it's just beyond her. And why should she? She's eighteen years old and terribly lonely and facing the possibility of having to seek employment in the subsequent months, because her parents are awfully understanding—fussing over her, constantly asking if she's all right—right now. But there will be a day—maybe in six weeks, maybe in six months, when they tell her that "yes, we said that everyone grieves at their own pace, but even grief has deadlines. There's a point at which we'll cease to sympathize with you, and start agitating for you to move on. Partially because we're anxious that you won't recover fully, and mostly because this traumatic experience is something we cannot share with you nor relate to, and it's exhausting to tiptoe around this pain that we cannot comprehend. So just—move on!" Fine. Just fine. She'll be well moved on before that day arrives.

"I don't know, but I'd like to work in a pub."

"A pub? Wicked. What can you make?" A quick spike of interest blips across Becks's hitherto flat interest line.

"Erm, I don't really know how to make anything." Hermione confesses, nervously, already wishing farewell to that transient sense of connection.

"Oh, that's all right. I'm useless at making drinks, too. I just turned eighteen last week, and it was wine bars and nicked vodka before that."

"Yeah, same here," Hermione returns eagerly. "Wine bars and smuggled firewhisky."

"Sorry?"

"Firew—oh, you probably don't have that here…in Nottingham. Must be a local thing…in Scotland." Hermione couldn't be more squirrelly if she tried. Well, maybe if she spelled back her buck teeth.

"Sounds great. Did you bring any back with you?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Oh…"

Oh no!—a lull. Hermione had not anticipated this. Silence transpires during which Hermione cannot form a narrower question that _So…what have you been doing these past seven years?_ Thankfully, Becks takes the initiative.

"Are you one a facebook?"

"Pardon?"

"Not on facebook yet? They just made it public, so most people haven't switched yet. I think it's better than MySpace, though, because there's a lot more privacy and you don't have to listen to any annoying music on peoples' profiles. What's your handle?"

"I'm sorry, but I can't say that I understand what you're saying?"

"Wot, were you in another world in that boarding school?"

"You have no idea."

"Well, how about your mobile? I'll give you a ring."

"I don't have a mobile."

"No mobile!? How can you send covert messages during class? Annoy your friends with your tasteless ringtones?"

Hermione grins at the thought of texting Harry during potions. "_imho snape is a h8r…gtg p0710n b0111ng 0v3r._"

Her chest constricts. Like there's a hard gall at the base of her esophagus threatening to swivel up and out her mouth, her eyes. She couldn't be that innocent again. She misses a time when the prospect of a scolding was terrifying. (And, strangely, she wishes Snape were alive to scold her. Just to remind her of who she is.) But that's not what muggle Hermione is meant to understand. She'll be subject to that kind of scrutiny for the rest of her life from employers, landlords, friends—and she can't just scream, "I'm Hermione-fucking-Granger and I was homeless in the bloody, sodding woods for months. I started fighting sadistic, hardened death eaters when my peers' greatest worry was drivers examinations. All to save your sorry rectum from a muggle Auschwitz, so just SHUT UP!" No, she's liable to be thrown into a psychiatric facility if she brings that up…

It's not fair! She doesn't want medals or accolades or even recognition for what she's done—she just doesn't want to be alone with her experiences. She'd just like to tell someone, anyone—war heroes tell people like Larry King, but she's perfectly content with a psychiatrist. But babbling about a resurrected reptilian mad-man who kills people with a stick—well, now we're back to Thorazine and doors that lock from the outside. Maybe if she'd been smarter, worked faster, hadn't been so self-involved and narrow-minded, hadn't gotten distracted by Ron—maybe they would have solved the riddle before the Ministry had collapsed. Before the anarchy, the riots, the factions…

She hears a muffled sob. She wonders briefly if she's finally crying, but then she realizes that the sobs have issued from the other end of the line.

"Why are you crying?" Becks chokes on her own attempt to talk straight.

"Why are _you_ crying?" Hermione echoes.

"I—my—" sobs swallow her words, but she holds together the shattered fragments of her voice long enough to say, "Pappelwick graveyard."

"When?"

"Now." The phone clicks on the receiver.

Hermione hangs up, suddenly overwhelmed with nausea. Her head feels heavy, and her skin prickles cold. Her blood vacates her body and she's filled with something less substantial—like polystyrene. Ready to crumble.

She throws on a jumper and shoes. Automatically, her hand slides open her left desk drawer, where her wand lies inert and diagonal to fit. She reaches for it, but her fingers curl in involuntarily. _No_ she decides, she's rather leave the past at home, at least for a few hours.

She slams the drawer shut with a curious mixture of elation and guilt. She feels oddly like a child shutting a cat into a closet. And when the door closes behind her, she pauses and pats down her pockets. She's fully clothed, but she feels oddly exposed. Like there's a hole in the back-side of her trousers.

Shrugging it off, she sprints to graveyard.

Hermione hits the pavement at a sprint. She could have asked if Becks has a license. Though "now" seemed to imply that she had some immediate means of conveyance to the graveyard. Or maybe she lives next to it. Frightening thought—Hermione had always been afraid of living near graveyards. She was (irrationally) afraid that the dead would rise one night and her house would be the first in the zombies' path of destruction. But anyway, Hermione cannot be certain if Becks lives close to the graveyard, as she's never actually seen Becks's house. At any rate, Hermione lives nearly a kilometer away.

As her chest seizes up and her breathing wears ragged, she dearly wishes that she had just apparated. No, she couldn't apparate. At half twelve in such a public place?

…Though just the thought of it makes her dizzy. Magic, that is. Not that she'd avoid it. That's absurd. She just…needs to become reacquainted with her muggle existence. Ever since, well, Hermione has been in limbo as to her position in the wizarding world. She hasn't graduated. The infrastructure's in shambles. She just couldn't stay. Thus, while her life there remains in question, she must prepare for the possibility of re-entering the muggle world. Not that the transition would be seamless. Not at all. The adjustment she would have to make—first, she effectively dropped out of the English educational system at the age of eleven, and even though she has been playing catch-up these past few months, her A-level scores wouldn't be sufficient for the Oxbridge system. Not to mention, she has no legitimate grades to submit and she doubts that her "Excellents" from Hogwarts would transfer. It's strange that the pursuits to which she has attached her cognizant life have so abruptly dead-ended. It's disconcerting, but if there's one lesson she can take from this, it's that her avenue to success was contingent upon the survival of the institutions that supported the roles for which she was training. She feels like Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart He was so heavily invested in the old ways of his tribe, that when the colonists came, he was unable to cope with the changes they wrought. And how did he solve his problems?—beat his wives and hanged himself. Well, that lesson wasn't terribly profound.

…but we can only take away narrow lessons for ourselves. Everyone already knows the big ones. They're timeless. There's a parable for every big lesson. They're collective property—a cultural inheritance that parents, pop culture and literature passes on like an heirloom. You never _learn_ the big lessons—it's just feeling what the morality tales have told you. So that when you feel those lessons, the feeling isn't discovery—it's more like a kind of completion. Satisfying circularity. The comfort of fitting into a world that others have comprehended. Not feeling alone…

Hermione stops at the graveyard gate, body bending in half, like a shutter clapping shut on its hinge. Her chest, her belly, her whole torso seems to expand with her panting. Leaning against the rusty wrought iron gate, she feels her muscles get heavy, as if big pockets of bloated blood were settling in her limbs.

She tests the gate, which groans like a demented old man disturbed from his nap. Despite its dilapidation, it refuses to budge.

"Hermione!" Becks voice calls from the other side of the fence. She cracks on the second syllable. Must have been crying.

Straining through the bars, Hermione locates the source of the greeting. Sitting cross-legged on a weathered, above-ground sarcophagus sits Becks. She rises, and meets Hermione at the gate.

She's grown, Becks has. Long blonde hair haphazardly tied back in a braid. Tall, for a girl. And possessing a defined, curvy figure which makes Hermione self-conscious about her own boy-straight body. Absurdly, Becks's looks cement a wall between them. Pretty people have always seemed somewhat unapproachable to Hermione.

"Grand to see you," says Hermione, with nervous enthusiasm.

"Yeah, me too."

"Erm, the gate's locked."

"Yeah." Becks says, as if the answer to Hermione's indirect question is self-evident. Hermione hates self-evident answers. They make her look like an idiot when she doesn't know them.

"Well, have you got a key or something?"

"A key? Just jump it."

Hermione glances up the rusted iron fence. It's taller than she is, and topped with edges that are blunt—unless one were to slip while climbing the fence. Then they'd do a decent job of impaling her. Now Hermione dearly wishes she had brought her wand. An _alohomora_ and an _obliviate_ would get her inside without a problem. She never realized how dependent she was on such a flimsy little stick. Wands: the power to kill—but liable to snap like a pencil if you sit on it.

"It's too high, I can't reach the top." She stretches her arm up and stands on her tiptoes to demonstrate her inability to scale said fence. Not that it would solve the immediate problem of getting in, but maybe Becks would decide to meet Hermione elsewhere.

"Just stand on the gravestone there and throw your leg over the crossbar." She says in a tone which is friendly, but nonetheless suggests that anyone who fails at said endeavor is grievously inept.

"Right."

The aforementioned gravestone is composed largely of weathered, crumbling sandstone, and whose extensive erosion suggests that it was erected in the eighteenth century—and probably not as a footstool.

Swallowing, Hermione puts one saddle-shoe'd foot on the headstone and grabs two parallel bars. Her soles are too smooth for this—the absence of traction is palpable in the precarious sliding of her heel as she fully mounts the gravestone.

From this height, the cross-bar is chest high, and yes, she's afraid. Spiders, giants, Cerberus—bring them on! She feels safe with a wand in her hand no matter what she's pointing it at. But heights—it's funny, she could break her neck and die and the headline in the _Prophet_ tomorrow would be "War Hero Hermione Granger Dies Falling off Fence."

That is, if the _Prophet_ were still printing.

Her mouth is dry and her hands are shaking. Her palms are slick on the iron bars, and she knows she can't trust them to hold her firm.

"Hurry up, then," says Becks, with an edge of impatience.

Hermione swings her foot onto the cross-bar, bears her weight down on it, and hoists herself up. The spikes are eye level, and Hermione can't shake the image of her eyeballs impaled on the heads. Like St. Lucy—except far more prosaic. At least she got to be martyred. The only cause she's being martyred for is social approval—but that makes her no different than any testosterone-laden troglodyte who's crashed his riced-out Civic in the middle of an illicit street race—except, here also, she is far more prosaic.

Mounting the bar, she suddenly realizes that the maneuvers by which she would need to scale the bar are rather perilous. She's hanging in the air, one foot planted on the cross-bar, two slippery palms gripping parallel bars, and posterior hanging in the air like a drooping cloud, afraid to commit her weight to the narrow, rusted cross-bar.

"I can't do it," she bursts.

"Yes, you can. Just—hop over!"

"Well, how did you get over?" Hermione blurts, as if Becks's claim to having scaled the fence has merely been a ruse to trick her into humiliating herself in attempting to climb it and really Becks has had a key all along. Hermione dearly wishes were the case—then at least there would be an alternate entrance into the graveyard.

"I can't," she repeats, voice tightening, and tears swelling in her eyes.

"Shh, someone will hear you."

Hermione chokes down her tears, and shakily commits her weight to the cross-bar. She's crouching now, perched like a raven on a telephone pole, hands on either side of her clutching the fence posts for dear life. She can't stand, the bars don't reach high enough to steady her.

Summoning her courage, or at least her fortitude, she learns forward to jump—and stops short, grasping the bars so tight her palms are sore from the pressure.

"Jump!" Becks shouts. It's unnecessary to shout from this distance, but of course the increase in volume is due more to irritation than concern over making herself heard.

On this prompting, Hermione closes her eyes (a foolish idea) and falls forward. At the last moment, she makes another grab for the bars, but too much of her weight has tilted forward, and only one hand in successful, while the other twists, awkwardly falling down, down and making the bar slip out of her grasp. One of the iron spikes catches her jeans, ripping through the material and tearing a jagged laceration across her calf.

She hits the ground with an audible thump which in some ways is more sickening than the physical impact of the fall. The impact knocks the wind out of her chest.

"Are you all right?"

Why do people only ask that question when you're quite obviously _not_ all right? The question really is: are you too maimed for me to continue this social encounter without fussing over your injuries?

"F—" she coughs a shock of air into her lungs, "Fine. I'm fine."

"Nice cut there," says Becks, as if complimenting a new designer purse. (_Oh thanks, it's one of a kind..)_

Hermione sits up, and peeps through the gash in her ruined jeans. The cut's raw, but not deep. She can heal it (and mend her trousers) when she gets home.

"You coming?" Becks has seated herself on the same stone sarcophagus.

Hermione struggles to her feet, pain searing her calf, but she's determined not to reveal the extent to which she has damaged herself.

Seeing no convenient place adjacent to the sarcophagus, and being unwilling to plop herself down into the wet, grave-mud grass, she sits beside Becks. The stale adrenaline in her veins is making her head foggy. She can't remember why she's come here. Consequently, she can't think of anything substantive to say.

"You're not wearing your jumper," she says, straining for familiarity.

"I'm sorry?"

"The jumper you wore every day."

"I don't…Oh, wait, I remember. The Man-U one, right?"

"No, the…never mind."

Hermione feels grieved that Tinkerbell has been supplanted by Manchester United. Moreover, she feels a strange sympathetic connection to Tinkerbell as one discarded, part of a dim past that young adults so earnestly struggle to bury. But Hermione made her decision, and really she was the one who discarded this life in favor of Hogwarts. She just never believed that she would be called to reckon for it.

In the silence of the crowded graves, Hermione hears a sob. The purpose for this meeting returns to her with a shock—like waking up from pleasant dreams, and realizing that you're real and you've got a funeral to go to that day.

Becks sobs, and Hermione wonders what has addled her so. Friends talking ill of her behind her back? Parents being over-protective? Boyfriend cheated on her? Hermione dearly wishes that her experiences were narrow enough to cry over such trivialities.

Life's a cup, you know. And your experiences are water. Experiences are always the same volume, but the cup…it grows. So, things like that might make Becks's cup overflow and she cries and cries the tears of it, but Hermione's cup, well, such things are shallow, half-evaporated puddles at the base of her life.

That doesn't make Becks wrong, because no one deserves to have perspective like Hermione has at her age. She wants to cry about stupid things, sometimes. She misses Ron. Can't she cry about that? His family went into hiding and he can't contact her without potentially compromising their location. Isn't she important? Doesn't he trust her?—stupid question, really. They braved the apocalypse together, but she's eighteen, so they don't treat her like an adult. What does it take to earn approval? She knows that Harry wouldn't be bitter like this—but she and Ron have always been Harry's foils. Close, but defective. Best of intentions, but lacking a certain something that makes Harry the messiah. Peters and Thomases to Harry's Jesus.

--life isn't fair, and she's still young enough to believe it should be. Maybe that's why they still don't trust her fully. Idealism is dangerous these days.

Despite herself, she harmonizes with Becks—sobs with sobs. Hermione's real griefs are too big to cry, so she'll cry for the small things. Cry for the stupid, juvenile, petulant things.

Becks throws her arms around Hermione, and Hermione doesn't care. It feels good not to be alone with tears. That only doubles your grief. You cry for what you're crying about, then you cry because you're alone. And the warmth of someone else feels soothing, even if she smells like stale fags and cheap perfume. She returns the embrace, crying buckets on the shoulder of Becks's jumper.

There's something that bonds women crying, something where you don't need to say what's wrong—it's sufficient just to be connected in your grief. They cry like that for a long time inside that limbo where time feels like an eternity because purging your demons always feels like it takes years, when in reality, it's probably only five minutes.

It takes a moment for Hermione to notice the fingertips peeking under the hem of her t-shirt. They're cold on her back. She's ambivalent about them. She ignores them.

The fingertips slide up her back, till fingers, a palm and a narrow wrist have also wormed their way between her lower back and t-shirt. The palm and wrist are warm, and together all parts of her hand stroke Hermione's back. Every tendril of Hermione's body rears up at the touch.

By now, her tears have stopped, and by the evenness of Becks's breath, she imagines that her grief has also abated.

The hand lingers at the base of her spine, lazily stroking up and down and around and basically coaxing every jot of physical stimulation out of Hermione's lower back possible. And more. The gentle strokes have raised goose bumps on Hermione's flesh, making her even more sensitive.

She feels like she's in a trance. Like the world's narrowed to tunnel vision and there's nothing precise except for physical sensations. It's easier that way.

The fingers inch up her spine, teasing out pleasure where Hermione had never known it to exist before. Pleasure radiating out from her spine. Pleasure wrapping around her ribs. Pleasure like a fishhook grabbing directly for her nether regions. She's suddenly quite aware of her pulse down there, throbbing dully like a faint heartbeat.

[Over Becks's shoulder she spies the name on the gravestone. _Jonathan Hathaway III_. She doesn't imagine that Jonathan Hathaway III would be terribly pleased with the unnatural acts currently occurring two meters from his mortal remains. She stifles the thought and squeezes her eyes shut.

Warm, tapering fingers brush the curves of her ribs slowly inward, making Hermione acutely aware of her breasts, in a physical sense. As if within her dense network of nerves the dormant mesh of nerve endings in her breasts have suddenly fired-up, buzzing with activity. With want. With need. Arching up for physical stimulation to match her feverish anticipation.

The fingers trace a circular pattern, looping inward and outward in ellipses of greater and greater eccentricity—meaning, in absurdly academic terms, that the caresses sweep nearer and nearer to her multitude of fibrous axon terminals writhing in unison—but it's excruciating. To know want without a floor or ceiling. A stray digit peeps over the goosefleshed mound of her breast and she wants to scream.

Amid the silent graves, she can hear herself panting.

With agonizing lethargy, the finger slides away and the seconds dilate to staccato eternities as she waits and waits for it to arc back inwardly. Lazily, it circles back around, and her neurons stretch their limits to meet it and she swears she could hear the hyperactive thumping of her heart palpitations. But the finger falls away.

Hermione's throat clenches tight as a withered vine and she has never felt a more visceral imperative to cry and cry and cry.

"Beg me for it." A whisper harsh in Hermione's ear, sharp with gravelly shards that flay as they grind into her.

Her feelings are…conflicted. Like she's being called a mudblood, but…something else. Like that same voice is promising her anything she wants if she'll agree. And everything Hermione represents to herself is offended, but for the first time she feels that she's being forced to reckon with everything she refuses to admit to be. And she rather liked the feelings those fingers inspired, and even more so she enjoyed the moral immunity that came from closing her eyes and just feeling it without naming it. She could have gone on that way, for…who knows how long. She could have.

But the moment has far too much momentum to stop now.

"Please—please touch me." She pleads to the base of a golden ponytail. She feels threadbare—words being wrung out of her.

"Where?" And it's the most difficult question ever posed to Hermione, not for the elusiveness of the answer. Oh no, that would never be a problem for her. It's the humiliation of answering it. It's admitting that she has sexual anatomy, and yes, she's connected to it. And in this moment, controlled by it…

It's that potential that frightens her, the potential that there's a realm of her existence where her mind is obsolete. She so prides herself on her mind that maybe she's useless where she can't apply it…but she wants.

"My breasts." Hermione shuts her eyes and crushes her face into the fags and cheap perfume of the jumper—into the curiously narrow, feminine shoulder.

The moment she speaks, the hand which had been lingering, splayed across her ribs, creeps forward and cups her breast. The suddenness and fullness of the contact makes her breath catch, her exhale trills on its heels as her skin reverberates in response.

Soft fingers caress her skin, making her shiver from the core., and the warm vibrations of pleasure resonate deep inside her—in her breasts, her stomach, her…crotch. And though Hermione feels awful comparing them, the care and meticulousness of the caresses is much more pleasant than Ron kneading her breast like raw dough through her jumper. He only tried once, but it was miserable, and made her dismiss her breasts as an erogenous zone outright. She couldn't help but to feel violated—what with his clumsiness, his lecherous eagerness (something she's always despised—when a perfectly rational young man becomes a grunting Neanderthal in the presence of two lumps of fatty tissue.) And because of that, it was easier to say no. She even felt proud of herself for it. Repressing her sexual desires was nothing at all. Nothing—until she actually felt sexual desire.

Her nipples pulse like beacons on her electrified nerves, straining upward for something tactile. The warm, blood-plump pad of an errant forefinger brushes the peak and her spine shudders into a curve, arching toward that touch, but only trapping the hand between their chests. Hermione draws back, careful to leave sufficient space for the hand to maneuver, but unwilling to draw back enough to meet her face…

It total, she's bent her spine into a comical quarter-circle that hurts to maintain, but she wants—

"You didn't tell me to touch you there," is the response to her contortions. The voice is louder than a whisper, and consequently far smoother, more feminine. She knows it's a girl wielding this power over her, and it excites her. Excites her in ways she knows Ron (or any other male, for that matter) couldn't. Excites her in ways that make her feel like she's not being victimized. Excites her because her sexuality's safe, and for the first time she feels some modicum of control. And refreshingly, not as the antagonist.

And she could say it, but the word 'nipple' has always sounded ridiculous, even in her thoughts. And there's no safe euphemism for it, no medical terminology on a more comprehensible level than _mammary papilla_. If the word were less…strange, then maybe she would feel less self-conscious about them. Maybe by extension she believes that her nipples are ridiculous. Damned loaded words—loaded with repressive cultural inheritance.

But doesn't intellectualizing just make it so worse—yes, ridiculous as it sounds, then "Touch my nipple."

Becks takes Hermione's nipple between her thumb and forefinger, gently as if she were plucking a flower by the stem. Classical conditioning. Hermione moans now, feeling as if the wispy tendrils of her nerves were dancing like reeds caught in a strong wind, enlivening every inch of her skin all radiating from her breast—and she wants more. Much more.

She bites her lip, and minutely jerks her shoulder, so that her nipple is clenched in a momentarily tighter grip. After a moment, her stratagem is detected and Becks says, "Oh, very clever. But you've got to ask." She says it in the same volume and timbre as her speaking voice—but the tone…it's mocking. Assured. Something about it makes Hermione suddenly conscious of the clamminess between her legs.

And because of classical conditioning (asking yielding pleasure) she could ask, but something besides modesty tethers her to silence. It's shame—for wanting what she wants. For asking for it. For breaking down and being selfish for just one moment. For being weak.

…but she deserves it. She deserves a moment of weakness. There's nothing to sacrifice for right now, just the rest of her life stretching past horizons that recede further and further the closer she comes…

Yes, this is her life now. And right now—she just wants her nipples teased.

"Squeeze them," she says so low, she's almost growling. She feels possessed. She loves it. "Pinch them. Tweak them. Twist them. Hurt me. I don't care."

And Hermione can't speak so earnestly to someone's back, so she pulls back, and sees Becks's face and connects the sensations to a person. To a girl. A girl with amber-green eyes and crooked teeth. A girl whose fantasy has run away from her.

Becks must be taken aback, because there's a long pause where she doesn't move or speak. It unsettles Hermione because she felt comfortable with Becks directing this…whatever it is.

"I—I've…" Becks's hand drops out of Hermione's blouse, guiltily, like she's been caught picking forbidden fruit, and she can almost see the apple dropping, rolling through the grass between the crowded graves. "I've got to go."

Becks shoots up, hurries to the fence and jumps over.

And now Hermione's where she didn't want to be from the beginning—alone and crying.

Hermione slips inside the house as quietly as she can, gently nudging the door shut behind her. It squeaks on the hinges. _Damn it._ For the third time today, she wishes that she had her wand.

"Hermione," her mother calls from the kitchen.

"Yes, mum?"

Mrs. Granger emerges and upon seeing Hermione's bloodshot eyes and torn jeans, wrings her hands and begins to panic. "Hermione, what happened?"

"I…hurt my leg…so I cried."

Mrs. Granger kneels down to examine the injury. Sure, she's got "Doctor" in front of her name, but she's knows no more about wound care than a housewife.

"Are you sure? I don't see anything. Hermione, what's wrong?"

Hermione turns in her leg for a better view of her calf. Her mother was right. There is not trace of the angry laceration. Not even a red mark to betray its existence. But she hadn't healed it…

"Oh, must have just banged it, then," she says, a little too quickly.

Mrs. Granger begins to speak, but bites down on her words. Hermione carefully side-steps her mother and rushes to her room.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thanks for all who commented on the first chapter. I am glad to find that I am not the only person who craves social-relevance in fanfiction. To those new to the story: This fic is a story, but it's also a part of a UCLA research project about slash as social/literary criticism. I've been alarmed at how devoid of social relevance slash fanfics tend to be, so I've decided to write a fic with (what I hope is) social consciousness. Thus, feedback is greatly appreciated, whether about the story or the project. Hell, just your thoughts about slash/femmeslash's place (if any) in the context of today's society would be great.

_ I turned the page and read…I am sorry to break off so abruptly. Are the no men present? Do you promise me that behind that curtain over there the figure of Sir Chartres Biron is not concealed? We are all women, you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these—"Chloe liked Olivia…" Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women. –_Virginia Woolf A Room of One's Own, 1929

Hurriedly, Hermione ransacks her bookshelf for any books even remotely related to spontaneous wound healing:

_The Indispensable Medi-Witch's Desk Reference_

_HDM CDXX: A Healer's Diagnostic Manual_

_A Compendium of Episkeuo-Based Healing Spells_

_Magical Medical Anomalies_

_A Complete Squib's Guide to First-Aid_

And, in sum, everything but the Bible. Although, now that she considers it, Jesus did heal the sick without the assistance of a wand. She has a pet theory that Jesus was a wizard. Honestly, any first year could transfigure water into wine, and walking on water could be as simple as a _wingardium leviosa_, and feeding five hundred people with five loaves of bread and two fish—well, that's just a rather tedious repetition of the _geminio_ charm. And what happened to Jesus?—he has a religion devoted to him. No wonder the ministry is so strict about performing magic in front of muggles—any first-year drop-out could turn a badger into a happy meal and become the next messiah. (Though from what she's read about McDonald's sanitary policies, some unscrupulous food processors performed that very same feat _without_ becoming messiahs.)

Anyway, if she were to perform a _torquere_on the American president in order that his head literally contorts its way into his rectum, then maybe she could become a prophet and start a new religion based on tolerance, respect, humility and peace. Then again, as she recalls, Jesus preached the same ideas, and judging by the actions of his more prominent followers, the tolerance and peace turned into genocide, inquisition and war. No, Hermione wouldn't like that at all.

And how _in God's name_ did she get on about the Bible? Oh, healing. Right.

Not bothering to lug the pile of tomes to her desk, she sits cross-legged on the floor in the midst of the volumes.

She picks up _The Indispensable Medi-Witch's Desk Reference _first. (As opposed to the "Disposable" Medi-Witch's Desk Reference, of course. If the house is burning down, save the desk reference before the children.) With difficulty, she opens the dusty book covers, scanning the table of contents for anything related to wounds.

_Chapter I: Artifact Accidents_

_Chapter II: Creature-Induced Injuries_

_Chapter III: Magical Bugs_

_Chapter IV: Potion and Plant Poisoning_

_Chapter V: Spell Damage_

Nothing seems to quite fit her enquiry, so she pulls her wand from the drawer (noticing a palpable sense of physical relief, somewhere between a sleep-deprived person taking a shot of expresso, and a stoner taking a hit of cannabis.)

Holding her wand over the tome she intones, "_quaero_ wounds." With startling speed, the pages flutter through half of the book before settling on a section entitled

"_The manifolde woundes acquired of magicalle creetures and theire divers treetementes."_

Hermione_hates_ archaic spelling. Before Ben Johnson standardized the English language, elaborate spelling was a sort of status symbol among foppish, aristocratic dandies. That and sodomy. Why can't they have normal status symbols, like…sports utility vehicles or giant houses with no back yards? At least those don't hamper her attempts at comprehension.

"_Tunk_" she says, tapping the page.

The black font of "wounds" turns red a few lines into the page.

"_Tunk_." A red highlight a few millimeters down the page.

"_Tunk._" The page turns, highlighting "_woundes_ acquired of werewolves"

"Damn it." She mutters, wondering at how many times the word "wounds" occurs in the book.

"_Duco_ wounds."

The red "wounds", "woundes" (and even the adventurous "whoondesse") waft up from the pages translucent as smoke. They join together on a single plane, as if printed on a page—and the list is as long as she is…

"Shit."

Her bedroom door swings open—panicked, she looks to her mother's gaping eyes. Of course, she can't quite meet them, as Mrs. Granger's gaze is riveted to the smoky cloud of red letters suspended mid-air between herself and her daughter.

A sharp shot of adrenaline sets Hermione's heart palpitating audible as a metronome click-clacking on presto. Oddly, she feels as if she's been caught doing something naughty with a boy.

"Sorry, dear," she says hastily, backing out of the room.

Her parents are understanding. Well…they try. Really hard. For the first six years, it was as if she had been selected to enter some prestigious preparatory school. Not much of a stretch, as she had had her heart set on Dollar Academy as a young girl, so she probably would have attended a boarding school anyway. Back then she wanted to be Prime Minister when she grew up. So things were normal. She would spend the hols with her parents, they would of course have nothing to talk about, and shortly thereafter she would return to her distant public school world. Then she came of age and…it hasn't been quite the same. There's no rule against performing magic in the house. They would never do that. But Mum spilled hot tea down her front when Hermione first performed a scourgify on that evening's dishes. Hermione offered to use the spell to clean it off and to soothe the burn, but her mom nervously stammered that aloe vera would be _quite_ sufficient. And she didn't mean to emphasize it that way, because there are things you think and things you say, and that was not something Mum would say. So now, with the magic, it's as if she went to Hogwarts and came back with—with a girlfriend—

"Oh—CUNT!" she curses the worst curse word buried in her lexicon. And then she laughs at the half-realized irony, but not a laugh of mirth, heavens no, that pained kind of stuttering laugh one uses to defuse something devastating. The kind of laugh you laugh because you don't want to scream or cry or screamandcry.

"Hermione? Something wrong?" Mrs. Granger has been standing outside of the door the entire time, and rationally, Hermione knows that it's because she's waiting for Hermione to invite her back in, but she feels so bloody intruded upon.

"I'm fine," she snaps.

She can hear shuffling outside of the door and finally the sad footfalls of her mother traversing the hallway. Immediately, Hermione feels ashamed. She hasn't been short with Mum since she was little, and it must be painful, especially now. God, she can be such an ingrate sometimes. Mum and Dad have bent over backward to accommodate her—she's an adult right now, she should be at university, not an in-home dependent of her parents. Well, she'd _love_to be at university right now—it's not her fault that the wizarding world has collapsed into anarchy. But she should be there—that's her home. She should be fighting!—not kissing girls in graveyards.

…had they kissed? No…no they hadn't. Becks touched her, but Hermione didn't do anything. She should have told her to stop, but she'd been paralyzed. She'd heard about this. It's a biological freeze response. The same thing that immobilizes someone in the path of charging elephants prevented her from halting Becks's advances. That's it. But she'd liked it. She'd begged for more. Maybe it was just part of Becks's fantasy, but it had the net effect of preventing any moral disassociation on Hermione's part. She…liked it.

Well, she'd never been touched that way. If Ron had touched her that way, then she would have responded the same way. An open-eye image of Ron touching her deftly, lightly—but that's where the fantasy cracks. Ron couldn't touch her softly. Boys couldn't touch her softly—not without making her feel patronized—like some fragile whisp of porcelain liable to shatter. _Damn it!_ The tactile memory of soft hands running down her back so smooth she can feel the delicate grooves of her fingerprints, it makes her stomach coil tight as a snake. But that's not really her stomach. It's low and warm and makes her crotch uncomfortably aware of itself. _Damn it!_

This is so—INCONVENIENT!

And she can't even talk to Ron about it. Ron!—where is Ron!? He's an adult, a man now, and yet he lets his parents control his life. She couldn't find him if she wanted to. It's been months and still no word. He could be dead for all she knows.

A brief picture of Ron invades her mind—arms folded stiffly across his chest and undersized dress robes confining his body, tight and leaving his wrists and socks bare. Eyes fused shut, permanent and waxy. Do wizards embalm? She wishes they don't. There's just something…dysfunctional about muggle burials. Like it's some kind of desperate attempt to make the dead look…not dead. As if they were just taking a long nap, but you'll see them when they wake up. Most people can't face death in its starkness. The realization that people are meat and you're not laying your loved ones to a pleasant rest—you're planting them in the ground to be devoured by detritovores. And when someone dies, we all take stock, examining our moral inventories. Like a bill at the end of life, wondering if, in the end, you've come out even. But we rarely do an even amount of right by anyone. Not even ourselves.

And Ron—after all the years of denial, jealousy, bickering, and wanting and dreaming and fantasizing…she's realized that the wanting had been so much more thrilling than the having. In his room, the first time that her body was his for more than a tentative, stolen second…but of course that had been mediated by some sense of propriety and pacing.

_So we're together now._

_Yes. Yes we are._

It had been the twelfth time he'd said it that day and she felt bad forcing that smile of "genuine surprise and elation." Ron could be so insipid sometimes.

"_I'm bored. Let's do something."_

"_All right. Would you like to take a walk?"_

"_No way. I'm tired."_

"_Ok then, how about we…get some dinner?"_

"'_m not hungry."_

"_I can—er—read to you?"_

"_That's boring."_

Honestly, Ron could be so insipid when there were no battles to fight. At least they gave him something to do. Some people are just so convinced that it is the duty of others to entertain them that they find it impossible to enjoy themselves. Ron, unfortunately, revealed himself to be of that ilk. Maybe Hermione had deluded herself, maybe he was an unimaginative oaf. A good friend. But an unimaginative oaf. A mommy's boy. Someone who was so dull that she couldn't enjoy herself because she was so conscious of his enjoyment (or lack thereof). Also, what she could not have predicted, is that in this particular instant, the lackadaisical attitude was…not calculated, but…for once he had something on his mind. Ron was sitting on his bed, Hermione in a creaky old desk chair opposite. Probably a ministry cast-off brought home by Arthur.

"_Hey, could you sit over here?"_

_She's leery, but she can't come up with a solid objection. "Erm, all right."_

_She sits on the opposite side of the bed. He fidgets for a moment. Probably had been expecting her to sit next to him. He scoots closer, doing it quickly so that perhaps it will escape her notice. Very smooth, Ronald._

"'_Mione?"_

"_Yes, Ronald?"_

_She turns half-way, and his face is millimeters from hers. Apparently, she hadn't turned close enough for a kiss, so he jerks her face the full distance with his thumb and forefinger. It hurts her neck. He's oblivious. Must think he's taking a lesson from Don Juan himself. And then he kisses her. Mouth too wide, engulfing her mouth and nose, and she has to exhale sharply to keep his saliva from running down her nasal passages._

_She breaks free._

"_Ronald!?"_

"'_Mione!"_

_Their tones are decisively asymmetrical, but Ron hasn't detected that. He wants her to want it. Confirmation bias. He embraces her, too rough and too tight and she knows that he's fumblingly trying to imitate the passionate love scenes in movies, the last seconds before the camera pans to the window curtains._

_He dead weights, and the paralyzing mass of him forces her backward onto the bed. And she can't scream, because his big soggy lips are sealing her mouth. And worst, she feels the bluntness of an erection rudely poking her stomach, like some obnoxious person agitating for her attention._

_And he's trying to unzip his trousers—that's when the paralysis wanes and adrenaline courses caustic through her blood._

_She tosses her head until her mouth is sufficiently free to scream, "Stop it!" And sufficiently frees her left leg to knee him in the bollocks. _

_He's so mortified that he pauses stiff as a wire-hanger over her, mouth open and drool glistening down his chin, and then he begins to cry._

_She squirms out partially from under him, turning him over and she tries to extricate herself from his convulsing limbs._

_--And that's when Molly Weasley throws open the door._

"_What are you doing to my son!?" she screams. _

In retrospect, Hermione was on top of Ron, who was crying with his trousers open, so what else was Molly to think? And Ron was either too injured or too disinclined to speak up in her defense.

_Disgusted with the whole mess, and practically shaking with indignation, Hermione grabs her wand and apparatus home. It's very rude to apparate without saying goodbye. With the same discourteous force of slamming the door in someone's face, but another moment in that room and she would have been screaming._

And that's the last time she saw Ron. The next day, Molly sent her a howler politely informing her that they would be going into hiding and it would be unsafe for her to try to contact Ron.

_Unsafe for whom?_

And she couldn't get back. Diagon Alley was sealed.

The spot where her leg had been lacerated twinges. It's somewhat painful. Tender almost. Tentatively, she touches the patch of pristine skin overlaying the pain, and to her consternation, the spot is tender to the touch.

Suddenly, she feels overwhelmed. There's too many problems on her mind and she's powerless to anything about them. Drawing her legs up, she huddles in a tight ball amid the pile of books. She feels the inertia of spiraling—of a hole in her resolve widening and widening and bursting and flooding.

Hold on now, she's Hermione-bloody-Granger, and she does not despair over personal issues. She is a problem-solver, not a catastrophizer, and if nothing else, there is one problem over which she has control. She may never see Ron again, she may live the rest of her life in the muggle world, but right now there is a girl. And it seems so big, because she can't even whittle that down to a problem, but maybe her over-developed cerebral cortex is contriving to create a problem where none exists. Maybe the crystal simplicity is just that. Simple.

She wants. Everything else has excluded her.

--She must speak to Becks.

She grabs her wand. Any muggle problem can be solved with a wand. She bounds down the stairs, leg tingling slightly. But it's barely more than a tickle, as if something fibrous were squirming under her skin. This increases her agitation. Yes, she's agitated. The kind of agitated where you've lost something and you can't breathe evenly until you've found it.

"Hi Mum," she says, anxiety arching the pitch of her voice, making her sound manically sunny.

Mrs. Granger looks more concerned than she would had Hermione descended the stairs to start a shouting-match. At least she'd been expecting that. But this sudden change in Hermione's demeanor must be awfully worrisome.

"Are—" she hesitates "—you looking for something?"

Hermione tears through the cupboards. Under the sink. Over the refrigerator. But she can't find it. And of course, she's got her wand in her hand, perilously twirling in Hermione's nervous fingers as she rummages through the kitchen.

"Yes, I'm looking for the mug, er, the English listing service. When one is looking for someone they look in the..."

"Yellow pages, darling?"

"Yes!" Hermione's head pokes out from behind a cabinet.

"_Accio_ yellow pages!"

A loud crash sounds from the office, a lamp smashes in the living room and Mrs. Granger turns just in time for the thick tome to whiz past her ear, hurtling toward Hermione.

Hermione squeaks out a startled _Aresto momentum_, and the book falls impotently to the tiled floor.

Mrs. Granger is livid. "Hermione! Can you please show some consideration for the other people living in this house?"

"I—I'm sorry," she stammers, trying desperately to say something apologetic, but far too frantic with her preceding problem to come up with anything compelling.

"That's not enough. Give me…that!" She can't bring herself to call it a wand, eschewing it like some dirty word. She's tolerant, but naming it would lend more credibility to its reality than she's ready to permit. No parents are perfect.

"But Mum, I…I didn't mean…I…"

"No, I'm sorry, Hermione, but you've shown multiple times that you have no respect for anyone else in this house. I'm dealing with this, too, all right? And it's not easy, and I've been doing my best, but it's been a lot for me to take in." Hermione's angry, but there's some validity to what her mother's saying.

"Yes Mum." She stretches out her holly wand, mind scrolling through everything she's losing with the wand, but they really all fall under the roof of one real loss. Mrs. Granger shakily reaches out, pauses inches short, fear warping her face—

"Put it in the silverware drawer," Mum says, deadly quiet.

"But it might get scratched!" Hermione protests.

"Put it in the drawer!" she screams shrilly, and Hermione's startled into compliance. She opens the drawer, carefully placing her wand behind the plastic silverware tray. The moment it leaves her fingers, she feels lackadaisical. Like she will never enjoy life again and any happiness she's had before was purely illusory. She looks at the window, half-expecting the ragged edge of a dementor's robe to flit past the glass.

But the explanation it much more banal. Depression is more palpable than metaphor this time.

She picks up the yellow pages. It _is_ rather heavy. Without looking up, she edges around her mother. The climb upstairs is laborious. Her feet sink into the stairs with each step.

Opening her door, she sighs at the mess she's made, knowing that she's going to have to organize it without the aid of a wand. She doubts she can lift some of these books. Maybe Dad will help her. It will make him feel relevant.

She climbs over the books, like so many loose boulders, and takes a seat on her bed. She opens the yellow pages, and thankfully, the pages seem to be in alphabetical order. She was afraid that she would need to perform a _qaero_ spell to find Becks. Then again, Muggles use these every day without the aid of a wand, so there must have been some system of organization.

She flips to the "C's" for "Crossman", but she can't find her anywhere between "Cross Country Shipping" and "CR Plumbing." Actually, the yellow pages seems only to list businesses. Unbelieving, she re-checks the page. "Cross Acupuncture and Herbs", "Cross-Country Express Mortgage" "Crosspoint Advisors"…

Her eyes swell, and her head begins to throb. Suddenly the room feels crowded and hot. Mum must have misunderstood.

—But she had asked about finding someone. Surely, there must be a way to find a private citizen.

She flips through the pages, noticing that the first section of the book is composed of a white section of pages. Opening there, she's relieved to find listings of people. Surely enough, there's "Crossman"…three pages of Crossmans. _Must be common_ she notes absently.

She comes to the B's, but finds no "Becks." Well, of course Becks must be short for something. She tries "Rebecca" with no luck. "Bethany"—no. She has similar luck with "Elizabeth" and "Bellinda."

And what if she's not even listed under her own name? She lives in her parents' household, so she might be listed under one of their names.

Hermione knows the spell to find her. It's a simple locator spell, and you don't even need a proper name to use it. But now she doesn't have her wand…

"Shit," she blurts. Crookshanks stretches his orange paws, then curls back up to sleep. Hermione feels inexplicably angry at him for his languor. She pushes him, trying to nudge him off the bed, he retaliates by hissing, and viciously scratching her forearm. "Stupid cat!" she yells, grabbing a pillow and shoving Crookshanks off the bed. He claws ineffectively at the pillow as she pushes him. She then opens the door, pushing him out with the toe of her shoe, and though she's not prone to anthropomorphizing, Crookshanks seems more than happy to quit her stormy presence.

Not wanting to alert the household to her distress, she tightens every nerve in her body to prevent herself from slamming the door. Oh, how she'd love the noise and the violence of it. She feels like she can't move about without breaking something. She just has so much pressure and energy in her body.

Hermione paces, eyes fixed on the yellow pages, as if her body were simply pivoting around her gaze. Her leg spasms, making her stumble to her knees. Must be the anxiety. She needs to calm herself.

She considers reading, watching BBC News, but she can't imagine being distracted. All she can see is the agitation of her loss compounded with the frustration of being unable to distract herself. She pictures herself in front of the telly, Simon McCoy relating the story of genocide in some obscure developing nation, and her in a glass box crowded with desires, not taking any of it in. It reminds her of a poem about Brueghel's painting "The Fall of Icarus" about how suffering happens when everyone else is absorbed in their own lives. How we as individuals so easily turn away from others' tragedy.

And it frightens her because when she first read it she was angry at the farmer and the ship's captain for ignoring Icarus's fall, but for the first time she understands them. She understands that private suffering is so much worse, because it's immediate, because it's hers, because, in that sense, it's real. Far-off wars and abstract death counts, what do they mean to her, except maybe a marginal increase in petrol prices? And when she dies, she'll pass as soundlessly as those forsaken cries in the desert.

Our suffering is our own, and that is the worst burden.

She picks up the yellow pages and methodically begins to dial. "Crossman, Aaron."

She's frustrated, but at least now she's only frustrated. After the first ten calls, she has lost any sense of embarrassment. She's always been somewhat afraid to call strangers. It's irrational, she knows, and she doesn't know what she's afraid of, really. But all that is passed. Now she's simply anxious.

She's reached "Crossman, William Y." and still no relation to Becks. With mounting apprehension, she scans the remaining centimeter of "Crossmans". Maybe her parents divorced and she goes by a new last name. Maybe they're unlisted. Yes, that must be it. There must be an additional three pages of unlisted Crossmans that she could not hope to contact.

But, of course, that doesn't mean she won't finish calling.

"Crossman, Wilhelmina". What a strange name. Very Germanic. She pictures an aged matron answering "Allo, Vilhelmina speeking". Behind her, hastily recovered, partially burned Nazi banners, framed, overhanging a glass case of fine china. Suddenly, she's very afraid to call. It's difficult to speak to someone who doesn't like you by principal. People who dislike you personally are much less intractable.

But, skipping it would just mean she'd circle back around to it at the end. Hesitantly, she dials the number.

"Hello, Wilma speaking," a genial voice answers in a deep, Birmingham accent. Her parents have always spoken in proper television accents, which earned her the derision of her peers for sounding "too posh", but she's always had a fondness for local accents. Those kinds of people sound much more approachable and interesting. Posh people sound all the same because they're part of a tradition of self-contained units, not connected to anything but the past. But local people, their roots are in a place and they exist in a kind of harmony with it, like interdependent pieces to a puzzle. And it's this openness that makes them so much easier to talk to. And, generally, more interesting.

"Er, hello, does someone named "Becks" reside there?"

"Becks? Oh, you're calling for Robin? Sorry, she's not in right now."

"Oh." Hermione's crushed, and somehow she feels cut-off from enquiring further.

"But you can try her on her mobile if you'd like."

"Yes, that would be wonderful!" She says, a little too enthusiastically.

She scrambled for a writing utensil, but her desk is empty of them, except for one ancient, chewed-up husk of a pen. She tests it on the yellow pages, but, unsurprisingly, it won't write. Using quills for seven years makes one neglect one's ball-point pen stock.

Finally, she finds a miniature tube of unused lipstick that a distant relation had given her for Christmas some years ago.

"Go ahead."

She takes down the number, politely thanks Wilma and hangs up. In her excitement, she nearly slams the book closed. But she stops herself, realizing she would smear the number beyond recognition. She doesn't know if she could have mustered the courage to call again.

She has it. Becks's number. Her heart beats against her chest like a madman bodily throwing himself against his bars. She's afraid to call. She's liable to vomit. But she must speak to her. Must know.

She dials, it rings. Rings. Rings. RINGS.

"Hello—"

"Becks, it's…"

But Becks is talking over her, and to Hermione's vexation, she realizes that it is only Becks's voicemail message.

She calls again, maybe Becks had been otherwise occupied, unable to reach her mobile in time. Maybe she's waiting patiently for Hermione to call back.

"Hello, this is Becks. Leave me a message and, erm, don't just hang up."

"Becks, this is Hermione. Can you call me back as soon as it's convenient for you? Thanks…Goodbye." The pause was the most important part. It contained everything she was too afraid to say and everything she couldn't yet put into words.

She calls twice more. Of course, no response.

Maybe Becks is busy doing, well, whatever it is that Becks does. But that justification rings hollow. Just a rationalization for Hermione to cling to, even when she knows, intellectually, emotionally, intuitively—that Becks is ignoring her.

And she can't call again without giving away her desperation. And desperation is anathema to human connection, especially in so delicate a situation.

She feels paralyzed, and for the first time in her life, powerless.

When her parents' room has been dark for over an hour, Hermione creeps down the stairs. The silverware door squeaks on the runners, but if she's quick, she can make a physical replica of her wand and replace it in the drawer before her parents can make it down the stairs.

The drawer's empty. She pulls out the silverware tray, slowly empties it onto the counter, gropes around in the darkness of the drawer, but there's nothing but years of accumulated dust and black, sticky drawer scum.

Hermione closes her eyes, struggling to feel the magic in her blood. Something tingling or burning or throbbing to remind her that she's still someone special. But that's always been her problem, hasn't it? Being so intellectually over-controlled that she can't feel the natural reverberations of magic within her. It's always made her feel inadequate. Like someone who's only entitled to a position within the school because she can memorize the intellectual framework.

Maybe that's what wrong. Maybe that's what she's been missing all along. The irrationality of magic…

Of love.


	3. Chapter 3

"Accio wand," Hermione intones, wearily, half-heartedly outstretched hand wilting.

Silence—not that she'd expected any different. It has become more and more difficult to chant the words as the days have slurred by. It pains her to speak them now, emotionally and physically. She's wrung-dry with it. And each recitation is yet another reminder of her recently-discovered inadequacy. She can memorize, but she can't think. _Accio_—one of many spells in her rolodex of covetously-acquired facts. She can remember it, recite it, but she can't feel it—not enough to summon without a wand—not when she's already lost so much confidence in her innate abilities.

It's just like in Divination—of course it seemed like a fraudulent subject at the time, that was before Hermione understood that magic is as much intuitive as it is intellectual. That magic isn't just a fact to be memorized out of books, but it's a feeling to be experienced inside herself. But there's nothing in there. And if there is, it's all stark, shivering shortcomings buried under a mountain of nominal achievements. And the reason she can't summon her wand and the reason she can't get a handle on her world is because outside of the clear-cut path of academics, she's lost.

Now she realizes why she'll always be the Thomas (doubting Thomas) to Harry's Christ—she's intelligent, but she's not smart. She's a fraud in the one arena in which she dared take pride. She can memorize and she can regurgitate, but what more is that than intellectual bulimia?—It's worthless! She'll never be smart. Intelligence is filling your head with facts, smart is being intuitive enough to apply them. Smart is having the inner resources to respond to life. Smart is openness to the external world and to her internal landscape. But she's not—she's closed. Hard as cinderblock and just as thick. Not a hint of intellectual porosity. As a result, magic has become a mechanical process, like so many cogs and wheels, prosaic as flipping on a light-switch—but now that her wand's gone, her formula has sunk down the plug-hole, and she simply doesn't have the talent to plumb herself out. And every time she repeats _accio wand_ to reverberating silence she's reminded of this deficiency.

And she'd performed wandless magic before—but her wand had always been there. Right beside her. Reassuring her that it would always be there to keep her safe. But what sane person would trust her life to an oversized pencil? And now it's gone and she's left with nothing but a cold, belated comprehension. She'd invested that stick with everything, but it's a weak crutch for her bloated inadequacies.

--And those are just her intellectual limitations—staggering as they may be.

Physically, it seems, this reluctance has manifested itself somatically. So great is Hermione's emotional aversion to the words that they've quite literally become increasingly difficult to say. Often, they are accompanied by painful spasms in her jaw that force her to grit her teeth to keep from screaming out. She hasn't slept either. Not really. Perhaps she's nodded-off, but when she does, it's the troubled sleep that she wakes up from shortly after wondering if she'd slept at all.

Her leg's gotten worse. Much worse. Her skin's distended from the swelling, and underneath the ache has intensified to molten roiling. Hermione's afraid to leave her room for fear that her parents will find out, which of course has led her to neglect her hygiene and to only dare steal scraps from the fridge in the haunted hours of the early morning—but she hasn't had much of an appetite anyway. And they don't bother her. For once their infuriating tip-toeing is working in her favor. All Hermione had to say was, "Your intrusions are impeding my grieving process." Her mum hasn't knocked since. But she hears them whispering in the hall. The harsh, crackling whispers that demand her surreptitious attention.

"._if she hasn't killed herself yet…"_

"…_just grieving…"_

"…_going in there!"_

"_No!—not just yet."_

But she still worries—without her wand, she can't heal herself, but that's an insufficient excuse to have her wand returned. No, if her parents see, they'll insist that she see a muggle doctor, but then the doctor will see whatever magical malady is affecting her, and she'll be discovered and with the unscrupulous people in power, she's afraid that she'll end up in a cage, being meticulously taken apart molecule-by-molecule under an electron microscope. No, she can't let them know. Besides, she's dealt with much worse. After a cruel string of crucios from Bellatrix Lestrange, a few muscle spasms are barely noticeable.

War has prepared her for physical pain, even when it would beat any lesser person to the floor. No, it's the emotional anguish that she's been unprepared for. It's the jumping out of her skin every time the phone rings, and the dark depression that replaces it when it's not Becks. It's the twitching distraction. The questions that swerve inward, bludgeoning as they hammer home. The shame. The doubt. The anger. The anger for being angry.

Becks hasn't called back. She calls Becks's mobile almost as often as she tries to summon her wand. But she won't answer. Hermione's become furious at the message. "—don't just hang up." She hasn't once, even though she's sure that her messages are ignored—that those painfully-weighed words are erased from existence the moment they're recorded. And she can't say the words that must be said, the true explanation that cringes from the world--_How could you make me want you and leave me to sort it out myself!?_

It's not girls. She's never liked girls. She's sat up for hours, methodically scrolling through the faces of every girl she's ever known and not a one kindles the barest spark of warmth inside of her. Disturbingly however, when she summoned the images of boys they all failed to produce any physiological reaction. Her body's inert. Enlivened for a moment, like the withering paroxysm of electricity jerking a corpse to momentary life, but all illusory. Even the memory of Becks' hands on her back (on her breasts) has become too worn to give her that stimulant jolt of pleasure that has been her only consolation these past five days.

But it only takes one exception to ruin a perfectly good scientific principle and that's what's been driving her mad. Well, many things have been driving her mad lately, but the idea that she could be a…like that—but she's not, so that's right out.

Of course she's never been interested in Ron, but Ron's an oaf. A good friend, but an oaf. What mature woman could want him? And now that she's got a handle on what she needs, rather than what's convenient, she could never want him. Storybook romances and first loves are all fine ideals, until you realize that the people you attach yourself to as a child are people that you would happily avoid as a grown-up. It doesn't matter. In her bare room in Hucknall, all of that seems like a dream. Something she invented to make herself feel special, and now that she's awake she can never feel that way again. Just the barest flickers of remembered joy that just as quickly smolder to bitterness. They make existing in this prosaic world all the more unbearable.

Hermione's arms stabs out, "Accio wa—" but a violent tremor seizes her arm, making it curl grotesquely inward and suddenly her body convulses in response. Her legs seize-up and she's on the ground, racked with spasms, arching up as if her nerves had been torn out, gathered into a bundle and violently twisted and she won't scream can't scream—FUCKCUNTWANKSHIT!

When the convulsions release her, she falls limp, limbs akimbo on the floor—for a moment she's sure a fire's burnt out and she's sizzling—and she's hot—maddeningly hot—and she'll breathe fresh air if she has to crawl to it.

The breeze momentarily cools the fire blossoming on her cheeks, but the heat runs bone-deep. The breeze falls, the air is so still she can scarcely believe she's breathing it. That's the trouble with air—it's so unpalpable that you can never be sure that it's actually entering your lungs or if you're just sucking in a vacuum.

She could go in, turn on the air conditioning, but the enclosure of her house itself seems so stifling. All she wants is the freedom of no walls. Of being able to strike out in any direction. She's never done much of that, and now's an apt time to start. And isn't that what they value in the muggle world? Innovation? Who says she can't think for herself—she'll start this very minute!

Left-facing, she strikes out across her lawn. Satisfied with the soft sinking of the nutrient-enriched grass beneath her feet, she decides to march across every lawn from her house to the end of the street. Yes, green green grass with darker green foot-tramples. There's a field there, bare except sporadic patches of brittle, trampled weeds. Past the field is the school, and in the yard there's a stark white looping trail painted on the concrete. Struck by a sudden fancy, she follows it to its end, which is unfortunately blocked by a plastic lunch-table.

Unsteadily, she climbs on—she feels light and shaky, as if she hasn't eaten in days. She's so hollow—if someone shook her she might rattle. But she feels a sense of conquest—as Hannibal must have felt when he'd crossed the alps. But Hannibal never saw Rome, and she can only see as far as the Tesco. She _believes_ that the world's round, but she _knows_ that it's flat. You can only _know _what you see—oh, she's no better than fundamentalist Christians—How much of this world has she taken on credit!?—

Starting today she will know—she will be Descartes—no, bollocks Descartes—there is no God to guarantee the veracity of this life—only her, an animal with a faulty apparatus for taking it all in—

—She's on the sidewalk again, tripping on the cracks where the tree-roots have broken through. Her feet are hopeless, dragging and stumbling clumsy as rubber.

There's the Marks and Spencer. She'll probably get a job there selling pop novels to functional illiterates. And The Herrick. An admirable, over-priced pub where she'll drink Pimms and commiserate with all of the other good old working walking dead. The bus shelter, where she'll catch the bus home, which ironically is too bare to shelter her from rain. It only shelters her from the sun that never shines, and when it does the last thing she wants it shelter from it, except now, now she wants snow, hail, sleet, anything to staunch the fever fire in her blood--

In the desert of her imagination, she sees a fluid mirage her parched lips would so love to kiss. A green gasp of fertility!—

Hermione's arms fly out, thin flaxen stems grasping for God—

"—Becks!" she shouts with the abandon of a self-aware dreamer.

BAM! She crashes to earth with scorching inertia. Lucidity sharpens the scene, quick as a taurine shot in a sleepless body. Becks is real. Hermione is real. How did she get here? How long has she been dreaming?

"Hermione?..." Becks says apparently caught off-guard—Hermione can hardly blame her. She'd be caught off-guard if confronted by a crazy person. But Becks quickly gathers her composure. "How are you?" Her tone is so flat and disinterested that Hermione's words rot in her mouth. Despite the heat, she's begun to shiver, and she's weak, so weak.

"I'm—fine. And you?"

"Fine." There's no vitriol behind them, just unacquainted blandness. Like strangers who've struck up on a conversation, but find that they've nothing to talk about. How could Becks touch her like she did and talk to her so distantly?

"Bus," says Becks, indicating the bus rapidly gaining on the stop. There's a scant hint of apology in her voice, but it's barred from any further elaboration when she quickly looks away.

"Oh…I love you." The words dribble out without her permission, but the relief Hermione feels almost compensates.

Becks says nothing, just stares intently at the approaching bus.

"I love you!" she cries, alarmed by her own desperation.

Becks turns away, squinting into the distance, as if impatient for the bus to convey her away from the awkwardness.

Frustrated, Hermione recklessly grabs Becks's arm. "Why are you ignoring me?"

"Shut up, you're acting stupid," Becks whispers harshly, looking around nervously, even though they're the sole inhabitants of this dingy old bus shelter—and to Hermione, they're alone in the world—but to Becks everyone must be there, always watching watching…

"Acting stupid? _I'm_ acting stupid!? You called _me_, you touched _me_, and you ran away and you at least owe me an explanation."

"Just forget about it, ok?"

"No, I can't just forget about it! I love you—and you're a girl…" and saying it out loud all of a sudden makes it chest-real rather than head-real.

"No shit."

"Tell me why!"

"You don't want to hear it."

"BLOODY TELL ME WHY!"

"Fine, if you want your cunting explanation so bad, you can have it! I was trying to be nice! The truth is, I didn't even mean to call you—Why the hell would I call you!? I don't even know you! I dialed the wrong contact when I was trying to call my mate Helen, and I didn't want to be rude when you picked up! As for the other…thing, my boyfriend and I just broke up and you took advantage of me! But we're back together! I'm normal! I like blokes! You were just there! sorry you decided to go off and be a lezzy—just quit calling me, you fucking dyke!"

Her arm flies out, drawing the bus to an incongruously quiet stop.

Hermione watches as Becks boards, pays her fifty pence, and takes a seat at the front. The bus gently rolls off. She wishes that Becks would shoot up two fingers in her direction, but she's not even accorded that small measure of acknowledgement.

Dazed, she stumbles home through the noxious fog of her reeling mind.

Once she's staggered to the kitchen, she shakily tears through the drawers until she comes upon a book of matches and a set of tapered dinner candles.

She'd read about ancient magical cults. They performed magic without wands for centuries—it was never direct magic with a mechanical purpose, just general spells for a bountiful harvest, the birth of a boy, a curse on a neighbor--

The latter is all she wants. A curse. A curse more devilish than anything she could imagine. She sets the candles on the floor and shakily sits cross-legged before them. Quietly, she chants the old Celtic incantations:

"_Plá ar do theach. Dóite agus loisceadh ort._

_Plá ar do theach. Dóite agus loisceadh ort._"

And like breathing, if only she could feel the magic brushing against the walls inside her—

Shouting now, she rocks her body back and forward in time with the chant, creating a cadence that rapidly crescendos—

There it is!—Magic seizing her—her whole body cramps and crumbles to the floor, arms and legs spasming uncontrollably, knocking over the candles, banging into the cupboards with ripe-fruit thumps but no pain and no panic when the tablecloth catches fire like an unfolding flower—before the darkness clenches its fist over her eyes and DARK!


End file.
